Tesla Roadster falls short of performance claims

Tesla Roadster falls short of performance claims

Tesla’s long and arduous journey of getting its all-electric Roadster to production only came to an end last week with the announcement that previous engineering problems would be solved and that the first car was ready for delivery. It appears now that initial announcement could have been a little hasty. First drives of the car have revealed that the Tesla Roadster doesn’t even come close to meeting some its official performance claims.

Tesla claims the Roadster can drive on a single charge up to 220 miles on its ‘maximum range mode’ and 165 miles whilst in ‘standard mode’. The guys from Autoweek only managed to get 93 miles out of the car before it went into a limp-home mode. Then there were the transmission problems, which included gearboxes not shifting gears or swapping cogs involuntarily.

The situation isn't as bad as it looks. These tests were done with the car being driven at or near its limits. Other reviewers have been getting more respectable numbers when driving the car at regular speeds. Further, MotorTrend said the car has a “supple” ride and it benefits from “rapid” acceleration. They even claim it has what it takes to match the performance of the likes of Ferrari and Porsche.

We just hope these test cars weren’t production ready and Tesla will be able to smooth things out before sales of the $98,000 EV start.